By John DalyUPI International Correspondenthttp://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050613-102755-6408r.htmWashington, DC, Jun. 13 (UPI)

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicingserious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Formerchief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W.Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about thecollapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlleddemolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds,who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the NationalCenter for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at TexasA&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at theWorld Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and agovernment attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented fromhis Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of ascientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers andbuilding 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believeit is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is notlikely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highlyvulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to accountfor the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the threebuildings."

Why Did the TradeCenterSkyscrapers Collapse?

by Morgan Reynoldsby Morgan Reynolds

"It didn't seem real. There are thousands of these steel beams that justfell like pickup sticks."

~ John Albanese, volunteer firefighter and amateur photographer

"What struck us - guys like Warren Jennings and myself, who have spentbasically all our lives in the scrap business - we'd never seen steel thisheavy, this huge, this massive. It was just unbelievable."

Many will nod their head, OK, that does it and go back to watching the NBAfinals or whatever, but I find this theory just about as satisfying as thefantastic conspiracy theory that "19 young Arabs acting at the behest ofIslamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan" caused 9/11. Thegovernment's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms, but itsblinkered narrowness and lack of breadth is the paramount defect unshared byits principal scientific rival - controlled demolition. Only professionaldemolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated withthe collapses of WTC 1 ( NorthTower ), WTC 2 (SouthTower), and themuch-overlooked collapse of the 47-story WTC building 7 at 5:21 pm on thatfateful day.

The scientific controversy over the initial structural weakening has twoparts: what caused the original tower damage and did that damage "severely"weaken the structures? Photos show a stable, motionless NorthTower (WTC 1)after the damage suffered at 8:46 am and the SouthTowerafter its 9:03 amimpact. If we focus on the NorthTower , close examination of photos revealsarguably "minor" rather than "severe" damage in the NorthTowerand itsperimeter columns.

As many as 45 exterior columns between floors 94 and 98 on the northeast(impact) side of the NorthTowerwere fractured - separated from each other- yet there is no direct evidence of "severe" structural weakening. None ofthe upper sections of the broken perimeter columns visibly sags or bucklestoward its counterpart column below. We can infer this because of thealuminum covers on the columns: each seam uniformly aligns properly acrossthe Tower, forming a horizontal "dashed line" in the fašade from beveled endto end. Despite an impact hole, gaps in perimeter columns, and missing partsof floors 95-98 at the opening, the aluminum fašade shows no evidence ofvertical displacement in the columns, suggestive of little or no wider floorbuckling at the perimeter.

The aluminum covers attached to the columns also aligned vertically afterimpact, that is, separated columns continued to visually remain "plumb"(true vertical), lining up top to bottom around the aperture, implying noperceptible horizontal displacement of the columns. Photographic evidencefor the northeast side of the North Tower showed no wider secondarystructural impact beyond the opening itself. Of course, there was smokepouring out of the upper floors.

The fact that perimeter columns were not displaced suggests that the floorsdid not buckle or sag. Despite missing parts of floors 95-98, photos show nobuckling or sag on other floors. If so, that boosts the likelihood thatthere was little damage to the core. Photos do not document what happenedwithin the interior/core and no one was allowed to inspect and preserverelevant rubble before government authorities - primarily FEMA - had itquickly removed. Eyewitness testimony by those who escaped from inside theNorthTowerconcerning core damage probably is unavailable.

Photos do not allow us to peer far into the interior of the building; infact the hole is black, with no flames visible. We know that the structuralcore and its steel was incredibly strong (claimed 600% redundancy) making itunlikely that the core was "severely" damaged at impact. There were 47 corecolumns connected to each other by steel beams within an overall rectangularcore floor area of approximately 87 feet x 137 feet (26.5 m x 41.8 m). Eachcolumn had a rectangular cross section of approximately 36" x 14" at thebase (90 cm x 36 cm) with steel 4" thick all around (100 mm), tapering to ?"(6 mm) thickness at the top. Each floor was also extremely strong (p. 26), agrid of steel, contrary to claims of a lightweight "truss" system.

Those who support the official account like Thomas Eagar (p. 14), professorof materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT, usually argue thatthe collapse must be explained by the heat from the fires because the lossof loading-bearing capacity from the holes in the Towers was too small. Thetransfer of load would have been within the capacity of the towers. Sincesteel used in buildings must be able to bear five times its normal load,Eagar points out,the steel in the towers could have collapsed only ifheated to the point where it "lost 80 percent of its strength, " around1,300oF. Eagar believes that this is what happened, though the fires did notappear to be extensive and intense enough, quickly billowing black smoke andrelatively few flames.

While some experts claim that airliner impact severely weakened the entirestructural system, evidence is lacking. The perimeters of floors 94-98 didnot appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system. Thecriminal code requires that crime scene evidence be saved for forensicanalysis but FEMA had it destroyed before anyone could seriously investigateit. FEMA was in position to take command because it had arrived the daybefore the attacks at New York's Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise,"Tripod II," quite a coincidence. The authorities apparently considered therubble quite valuable: New York Cityofficials had every debris truck trackedon GPS and had one truck driver who took an unauthorized 1 ? hour lunchfired.

The preliminary NIST Response claims that "the wall section above the impactzone moved downward" (pdf, p. 36) on WTC 1 but offers no evidence. It offersphotographic evidence, however, for a "hanging floor slab" on the 82d floorof the SouthTowerat 9:55 a.m. This looks minor though because there is nosag on adjacent floors and the integrity of the structure looks very muchintact. The fire looks weak too, yet the SouthTowercollapsed only fourminutes later. This would be quite a puzzle without a demolition theory.

About a dozen of the fragmented ends of exterior columns in the North Towerhole were bent but the bends faced the "wrong way" because they pointedtoward the outside of the Tower. This fact is troublesome for the officialtheory that a plane crash created the hole and subsequent explosion betweenfloors 94 and 98. The laws of physics imply that a high-speed airplane withfuel-filled wings breaking through thin perimeter columns would deflect theshattered ends of the columns inward, if deflected in any direction,certainly not bend them outward toward the exterior.

A possible response would be that, well, yes, an airliner crash would bend acolumn inward rather than outward, if bent at all, but the subsequent forceof a jet fuel blast would act in the opposite direction: any inward bendscaused by plane impact would straighten toward vertical or even reverse thebent steel columns toward the exterior under blast pressure. However, such aproposed steel "reversal theory" (first bend inward by collision, then bendoutward by explosion) suffers two major handicaps: 1 No "inward-bending columns" were observed and it would be unlikelythat each and every one would be reversed by subsequent explosion, and

2 the hypothesis is ad hoc and lacks simplicity, both scientificnegatives.

Occam's razor would suggest that the outward bends in the perimeter columnswere caused by explosions from inside the tower rather than bends caused byairliner impact from outside. Also supporting this theory is the fact thatthe uniformly neat ends of the blown perimeter columns are consistent withthe linear shaped charges demolition experts use to slice steel as thick as10 inches. The hypothesis of linear shaped charges also explains theperfectly formed crosses found in the rubble (crucifix-shaped fragments ofcore column structures), as well as the rather-neatly shorn steel everywhere.

The engineering establishment's theory has further difficulties. It iswell-known that the hole in the west wing of the Pentagon, less than 18-footdiameter, was too small to accommodate a Boeing 757, but the North Tower'shole wasn't big enough for a Boeing 767 either, the alleged widebodyairliner used on AA Flight 11 (officially tail number N334AA, FAA-listed as"destroyed"). A Boeing 767 has a wingspan of 155' 1" (47.6 m) yet themaximum distance across the hole in the NorthTowerwas about 115 feet (35m), a hole undersized by some 40 feet or 26 percent. "The last few feet atthe tips of the wings did not even break through the exterior columns,"comments Hufschmid (p. 27). But 20 feet on each wing? I'd call that asubstantial difference, not "the last few feet," especially since aircraftimpact holes tend to be three times the size of the aircraft, reflecting thefact that fuel-laden airliners flying into buildings send things smashingabout in a big way. The small size of the holes in both towers casts doubton the airliner-impact hypothesis and favors professional demolition again.There were no reports of plane parts, especially wings, shorn off in thecollision and bounced to the ground on the northeast side of the tower, tomy knowledge, though FEMA reported a few small pieces to the south at Churchstreet(pp. 68-9) and atop WTC-5 to the east of WTC-1.

Adding to the suspicious nature of the small aperture in WTC 1 is that somevertical gaps in the columns on the left side of the northeast hole were soshort, probably less than three feet (p. 105) high (p. 27). Not much of ajumbo jet could pass through such an opening, especially since a fuel-ladenplane would not minimize its frontal area.The engines are a special problembecause each engine is enormous and dense, consisting mainly of temperedsteel and weighing 24 to 28.5 tons, depending upon model. No engine wasrecovered in the rubble yet no hydrocarbon fire could possibly vaporize it.

The hole in the North Tower also is suspicious because it did not even havea continuous opening at the perimeter, but instead contained substantial WTCmaterial (p. 27) just left of center (pp. 62, 105). This material appearsintegral to that area, so it did not move much, suggesting minimaldisplacement and no clean penetration by a jumbo jet. These huge airlinersweigh 82 tons empty and have a maximum takeoff weight of up to 193 tons.

In the case of the SouthTower , an engine from UAL Flight 175 (tail numberN612UA and FAA-registered as still valid!) has not been recovered despitethe fact that the flight trajectory of the video plane implied that theright engine would miss the SouthTower. Photos showing minor engine partson the ground are unconvincing, to put it mildly. Perhaps independent jetengine experts (retired?) can testify to the contrary. Further contradictingthe official account, the beveled edge of the southeast side of the southtower was completely intact upon initial impact. The government neverproduced a jet engine yet claimed it recovered the passport of allegedhijacker Satam al Suqami unharmed by a fiery crash and catastrophic collapseof the North Tower. The government has not produced voice (CVR) or flightdata recorders (FDR) in the New Yorkattack either, so-called black boxes, afact unprecedented in the aviation history of major domestic crashes.

Adding to the problems of the official theory is the fact that photos ofthe NorthTowerhole show no evidence of a plane either. There is norecognizable wreckage or plane parts at the immediate crash site. While theissue probably takes us too far afield, the landing wheel assembly thatallegedly flew out of the NorthTowerand was found several streets awaycould easily have been planted by FEMA or other government agents. I'venever seen any objective analysis of this wheel assembly though it would bewelcome. In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckagefrom any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photoof the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania (The 9/11 Commission Report , Ch.9) shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just asmoking hole in the ground. Photographers reportedly were not allowed nearthe hole.Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board haveinvestigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes.

The WTC 1 and Pentagon holes were not alone in being too small. Photos showthat the hole in WTC 2 also was too small to have been caused by the crashof a Boeing 767. In fact, the SouthTower hole is substantially smaller thanthe NorthTowerhole.

The next question is whether the fires were hot enough to cause the WTCbuildings to collapse. In defending the official account and its clones thattry to explain the unprecedented collapses of three steel-framed skyscraperswithout demolition, heat arguably is more important than structural impact.That's obviously true for building WTC 7 because there was no allegedairplane impact.

First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour,had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within afew city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the thirdnot.These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made itall the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, tostudy what had happened. On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991FEMA report on Philadelphia 's MeridianPlaza fire said that the fire was soenergetic that "[b]eams and girders sagged and twisted," but "despite thisextraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads withoutobvious damage" (quoted by Griffin, p. 15). Such an intense fire withconsequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what weobserved at the WTC.

Second, severe structural damage to the WTC towers would have requiredfires that were not only large but growing throughout the buildings andburning for a considerable period of time. None of these conditions waspresent. "The lack of flames is an indication that the fires were small, andthe dark smoke is an indication that the fires were suffocating," points outHufschmid (p. 35). Eyewitnesses in the towers, as well as police andfirefighters, reported (pp. 199-200) the same thing.

Third, the impact opening was 15 floors lower in the South Tower than in theNorth Tower, where core columns were thicker, so the South Tower fire had toproduce more heat to raise the steel temperatures to soften up (thermallyweaken) the steel columns. Yet its fires were considerably smaller and 30minutes shorter in duration. The Tower collapsed after burning only 56minutes. A prime candidate to explain why "the wrong tower fell first" isthat the small dying fire in the SouthTowerforced the hand of the massmurderers who decided to trigger demolition earlier than planned in order tosustain the lie that fire caused the collapse. The NorthTowerstood foranother 29 minutes and its core steel was thinner at its upper stories. The1991 MeridianPlazafire burned for 19 hours and the fire was so extremethat flames came from dozens of windows on many floors. It did not collapse.Fourth, implicitly trying to explain away these difficulties, the currentNIST investigation, conducted by "an extended investigation team of 236people," makes "dislodged fireproofing" the key variable to explain thecollapses. Supposedly, "the probable collapse sequence for the WTC towersare (sic) based on the behavior of thermally weakened structural componentsthat had extensive damage to fireproofing or gypsum board fire protectioninduced by the debris field generated by aircraft impact" (p. 111). "Hadfireproofing not been dislodged by debris field," this team ofgovernment-paid experts claims, "temperature rise of structural componentswould likely have been insufficient to induce global collapse" (p. 108).Perhaps acknowledging the lack of direct evidence for its conjectures, theNIST admits that "a full collapse of the WTC floor system would not occureven with a number of failed trusses or connections" and it "recognizesinherent uncertainties" (pp. 110 and 112). The NIST will have to boost itscreativity to plausibly explain the WTC 7 collapse because it won't have thebenefit of tales of aircraft and debris fields.

Aside from specific defects in the fire collapse theory, a wide variety offacts undermine it: * Photos show people walking around in the hole in the NorthTower"where 10,000 gallons of jet fuel were supposedly burning. The women (p. 27)seem to (sic) looking down to the ground" (the NIST "Response" pdf, p. 62,also shows a similar photo of the same blond woman with light-colored slackslooking over the edge of the 94th floor).* By the time the SouthTower was hit, most of the NorthTower'sflames had already vanished, burning for only 16 minutes. * The fire did not grow over time, probably because it quickly ranout of fuel and was suffocating rather than the sprinkler system dousing thefires. * FDNY fire fighters remain under a gag order(Rodriguezvs-1.Bush.pdf, p. 10) to not discuss the explosions they heard,felt and saw. FAA personnel are also under a 9/11 gag order. * Even the 9/11 Commission (Kean-Zelikow) Report acknowledges that"none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of eithertower was possible" (Ch. 9, p. 302). It shocked everyone that day, amateurand professional alike, although some firefighters realized that so-calledsecondary explosive devices were a risk.

Griffin(pp. 25-7) succinctly identifies the primary defects in the officialaccount of the WTC collapses, and its sister theories. These problems wereentirely ignored by The 9/11 Commission Report (2004), so the governmentappointees must have found it difficult to account for the following facts: 1 Fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapseexcept for the three buildings on 9/11, nor has fire collapsed any steelhigh rise since 9/11. 2 The fires, especially in the SouthTowerand WTC-7, were small. 3 WTC-7 was unharmed by an airplane and had only minor fires on theseventh and twelfth floors of this 47-story steel building yet it collapsedin less than 10 seconds. 4 WTC-5 and WTC-6 had raging fires but did not collapse despite muchthinner steel beams (pp. 68-9). 5 In a PBS documentary, Larry Silverstein, the WTC lease-holder,recalled talking to the fire department commander on 9/11 about WTC-7 andsaid, "maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it," slang for demolish it. 6 FEMA, given the uninviting task of explaining the collapse ofBuilding 7 with mention of demolition verboten admitted that the best itcould come up with had "only a low probability of occurrence." 7 It's difficult if not impossible for hydrocarbon fires like thosefed by jet fuel (kerosene) to raise the temperature of steel close tomelting.

Professional demolition, by contrast, can explain all of these facts andmore. Demolition means placing explosives throughout a building, anddetonating them in sequence to weaken "the structure so it collapses orfolds in upon itself" (p. 44). In conventional demolitions gravity does mostof the work, although it probably did a minority on 9/11, so heavily werethe towers honeycombed with explosives. 1 Each WTC building collapse occurred at virtually free-fall speed(approximately 10 seconds or less). 2 Each building collapsed, for the most part, into its ownfootprint. 3 Virtually all the concrete (an estimated 100,000 tons in eachtower) on every floor was pulverized into a very fine dust, a phenomenonthat requires enormous energy and could not be caused by gravity alone("workers can't even find concrete. 'It's all dust,' [the official] said"). 4 Dust exploded horizontally for a couple hundred feet, as diddebris, at the beginning of each tower's collapse. 5 Collapses were total, leaving none of the massive core columnssticking up hundreds of feet into the air. 6 Salvage experts were amazed at how small the debris stacks were. 7 The steel beams and columns came down in sections under 30 feetlong and had no signs of "softening"; there was little left but shornsections of steel and a few bits of concrete. 8 Photos and videos of the collapses all show "demolition waves,"meaning "confluent rows of small explosions" along floors (blast sequences). 9 According to many witnesses, explosions occurred within thebuildings. 10 Each collapse had detectable seismic vibrations suggestive ofunderground explosions, similar to the 2.3 earthquake magnitude from ademolition like the Seattle Kingdome (p. 108). 11 Each collapse produced molten steel identical to that generatedby explosives, resulting in "hot spots" that persisted for months (the twohottest spots at WTC-2 and WTC-7 were approximately 1,350o F five days afterbeing continuously flooded with water, a temperature high enough to meltaluminum (p. 70).

Controlled demolition would have required unimpeded access to the WTC,access to explosives, avoiding detection, and the expertise to orchestratethe deadly destruction from a nearby secure location. Such access before9/11 likely depended on complicity by one or more WTC security companies.These companies focus on "access control" and as security specialist WayneBlack says, "When you have a security contract, you know the inner workingsof everything." Stratesec, a now-defunct company that had security contractsat the World Trade Center and Dulles International Airport, should beinvestigated, among others, because of the strange coincidence thatPresident Bush's brother, Marvin P. Bush, and his cousin, Wirt D. WalkerIII, were principals in the company, with Walker acting as CEO from 1999until January 2002 and Marvin reportedly in New York on 9/11. At least onereport claims that a "power down" condition prevailed on September 8-9 (pdf,p. 45) at WTC to complete a "cabling upgrade," presenting an opportunity toplant explosives with low risk of detection.

A related point is that demolition companies go to considerable expense towire steel-framed skyscrapers with explosives to produce safe implosions,and they would love to do it more cheaply by simply setting two small fireslike those that (allegedly) caved in building 7. Apparently, theterrorist-inventors have kept this new technology secret.

Why would the killers destroy WTC-7, especially since a collapse wouldarouse suspicion in some quarters? A logical if unproven theory is that theperpetrators used Mayor Giuliani's sealed OEM "bunker" on the 23d story ofWTC-7 to conduct the twin tower implosions and then destroyed the buildingand evidence to cover up their crimes, just as a murderer might set hisvictim's dwelling ablaze to cover up the crime (one in four fires is arson).Giuliani's "undisclosed secret location" was perfect because it had beenevacuated by 9:45 a.m. on 9/11, it enabled unmolested work, provided aringside seat, was bullet- and bomb-resistant, had its own secure air andwater supply, and could withstand winds of 160 mph, necessary protectionfrom the wind blasts generated by collapsing skyscrapers.

There is special import in the fact of free-fall collapse (item one in thelist immediately above), if only because everyone agrees that the towersfell at free-fall speed. This makes pancake collapse with one floorprogressively falling onto the floor below an unattractive explanation.Progressive pancaking cannot happen at free-fall speed ("g" or 9.8 m/s2).Free-fall would require "pulling" or removing obstacles below before theycould impede (slow) the acceleration of falling objects from above.Sequenced explosions, on the other hand, explain why the lower floors didnot interfere with the progress of the falling objects above. The pancaketheory fails this test.

If we put the murder of 2,749 innocent victims momentarily aside, the onlyunusual technical feature of the collapses of the twin towers was that theexplosions began at the top, immediately followed by explosions from below.WTC-7, by contrast, was entirely conventional, imploding from bottom up.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over thecause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the officialwisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based onsuch erroneous engineering analysis is not likely prove to be sound. Revisedengineering and construction practices, for example, based on the beliefthat the twin towers collapsed through airplane damage and subsequent firesis premature, to say the least.

More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would followif impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Ifdemolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the WorldTradeCenter on9/11, then the case for an "inside job" and a government attack on Americawould be compelling. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers andimpartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineeringanalysis of 9/11 right, "though heaven should fall." Unfortunately, gettingit right in today's "security state" demands daring because explosives andstructural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapsesof 9/11.

June 9, 2005

Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D. [send him mail], is professor emeritus at Texas A&MUniversity and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at theNational Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX. He servedas chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001-2, George W.Bush's first term.